R. W. Kindel House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the R. W. Kindel House in Parker County.

Now, some houses just sit there. This one has been making a statement since about 1881, and it hasn't quieted down since. A druggist by the name of R.

W. Kindel (born 1847, lived all the way to 1931) went and built himself something that the neighbors were not going to forget. Second Empire-style Victorian, if you please, right there in Parker County, Texas.

The walls? Native stone, twenty inches thick. Twenty.

You could practically live inside the wall. And crowning the whole affair was a concave mansard roof; that swooping, dramatic silhouette that says, in no uncertain terms, that the man who commissioned this house had opinions. Strong ones.

But here's what really sets the Kindel House apart from your ordinary Victorian showpiece. Down in the cellar, Kindel had a coal furnace installed, with vents running up into each room of the house. Central heating, friends; an early form of it, tucked right there under a Texas home in the 1880s.

While plenty of folks were making do with a fireplace and a prayer on a cold night, the Kindel house was circulating warm air through the whole structure. The druggist knew his comfort. In 1895, Kindel sold the house to a man named Jasper Haney, and the place kept changing hands the way a good house tends to do.

W. F. Bowden came along and enlarged the lower floor in the 1920s; probably couldn't resist tinkering with something that grand.

Then in 1972, Mr. and Mrs. William A. Bass purchased the house, adding their names to a long line of people who looked at twenty-inch stone walls and a mansard roof and said, yes.

That's the one. Some structures just refuse to be ordinary. The R.

W. Kindel House made up its mind about that back in 1881, and it hasn't wavered yet.

What the marker says

Druggist R.W. Kindel (1847-1931) built this Second Empire-style Victorian home about 1881. The 20-inch-thick native stone walls were topped by a concave mansard roof. A coal furnace in the cellar with vents leading into each room provided an early form of central heating. In 1895 Kindel sold the structure to Jasper Haney. Other owners included W.F. Bowden, who enlarged the lower floor in the 1920s. Mr. and Mrs. William A. Bass purchased the house in 1972. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1975.